1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for informing of operation procedures in an on-vehicle information system such as a navigation system.
2. Description of Related Art
The increasingly diverse functions made available in recent years to satisfy various user needs in electronic apparatuses such as navigation systems enable execution of different types of processing in response to user operations. At the same time, the user is bound to find it increasingly difficult to master the operation procedures, which become more complicated as more diverse types of processing become available. Accordingly, a number of methods have been proposed to enable execution of desired processing without requiring the user to memorize the operation procedure. For instance, Japanese Laid-open Patent Application Publication No. 2004-208196 discloses a method in which the user enters a search keyword that is part of the name of a specific function among various functions available in a terminal device such as a portable telephone, the corresponding function setting mode is searched in response and the operation shifts into the function setting mode. Through this method, the operation can enter the target function setting mode without requiring the user to memorize the operation procedure.
However, in the device disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application Publication No. 2004-208196, once a search keyword is entered, the operation immediately enters the corresponding function setting mode without allowing the user to learn the correct operation procedure. Thus, the user, without the opportunity to familiarize himself with the operation procedure for the particular processing, never learns it.